


A touch that grows softer

by Here_we_go



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Brief mention of past rape, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, a soft little progression in their relationship, lots of warm gooey feelings and good comunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 09:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11575125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Here_we_go/pseuds/Here_we_go
Summary: Experience has always been the best teacher. Andrew is learning that it will not always teach him to be wary.





	A touch that grows softer

They are sitting on the rooftop. Neil has his feet hanging over the edge, he has always had a death wish. The wind is blowing hard, tugging at his hair, ripping at his clothes, like it wants to pull him off, like it wants to push him back to safety. Andrew is sitting next to Neil and if he wanted to lie to himself, he would say he is having the same debate. In truth his hand is twitching on the cement between them. Bee has been talking to him about casual touch. Andrew has been talking to Neil about casual touch. Andrew is still working on wrapping his head around it. Touch that isn’t violent, or touch that isn’t sexual. Bee doesn’t have to tell Andrew that experience is the best teacher for him to know that. He is trying.

He reaches his hand halfway and before he can make contact, Neil turns toward him, first his eyes, then his head-always turning towards him. He comes back from his thoughts like taking a breath, like facing the sun. Neil falls open, leans into him, closes the space between the palm of Andrew’s hand and his cheek. Andrew lets himself hold Neil like that for a breath. Just that, just the palm of his hand against the scarred skin of Neil’s face. Neil ghosts his fingers over the soft sun golden hair at Andrew’s temple, traces the delicate shell of his ear with his thumb. This, Andrew is learning, is his reward for healing. This is what he gets for touching Neil, for letting Neil touch him. Something light and small curls in his chest. He takes a breath and lets it stay instead of smothering it.

Here’s the thing-Andrew has made this mistake before. He’s said it already hasn’t he? _Pipe dream_. He should know better. He has fallen prey to the love of others before. He was not born a monster. He was born naive and helpless just like everyone. He wanted to be loved. When Cass Spear opened up her door, when she ruffled his hair and took him out to eat. Hadn’t he been taken in then too? When she tucked him into bed and kissed him goodnight, when she turned off the lights and left him alone and defenseless for the night, hadn’t he tried to tell himself she didn’t mean to hurt him? When he had come to his brother, sharp and dead eyed but still inexplicably wanted by this brother, when he had opened the door then, when he had said “trust me”, wasn’t he betrayed then as well?

The only difference between the child that Andrew was and the child that everyone else was is that he remembers everything. The first time he fell, his first go on the swings, teaching himself to ride a bike, teaching himself how to hold a knife. Every punch and hug and flinch and touch. Apparently he still didn’t learn any better. Neil has been trying to show him something in the way he falls in with Andrew, in the way he comes easily into Andrews orbit. The way his eyes turn molten and soft and the open curl of his hand, an offering.

He should have known better.

It is the morning, and for once Andrew finds that he has slept through the night. That he is sleep-warm and loose. Neil is in front of him, the only other one in the kitchen, curled around a mug of coffee. His clothes are rumpled and his hair is a mess of curls. Andrew reaches forward without thinking to smooth down one of Neil’s wayward cowlicks. Neil flinches. Andrew probably wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t watching, but that’s the trick isn’t it-that he’s always watching. He jerks his hand back to himself and steps back hard. Shock and guilt try to beat back the heavy blanket of his apathy. When had he started taking touching Neil for granted? When had he started to assume? Doesn’t he know how easy it is to dash trust like that against the ground? Beneath that though the taste of unwanted vindication, like battery acid in his mouth. Hasn’t he been waiting for the other shoe to drop? Doesn’t he know that he’s a monster? That he made his hands into weapons? Hasn’t he learned all about the way that people are, and that he is no exception?

“Are you afraid of me?” He asks first because he needs to know. Because he needs to just get this over with.

“No,” quick, immediate, like he doesn’t have to think about it even though he still isn’t looking at Andrew.

“Don’t lie to me.” because that’s all Neil has ever done isn’t it. Except in Baltimore except every day since. Except for the fact that Andrew never would have touched him if he thought those yeses were lies.

Now Neil is looking at him, shoulders up and teeth bared, angry because he is good at it. “I am not _lying_ to you.” he says and it sounds true “I have _never_ been afraid of you.” 

Andrew doesn’t believe in words. Not really. He said “promise me” and Aaron agreed. He said, “he raped me”, and Luther opened his doors. He said no, he said please, and it never did him any good at all. Just because he tells the truth doesn’t mean anyone else will.

His memories want to tell him this is true though. Was there ever a day that Neil was afraid of him? Neil-who jumped at shadows and flinched away from a man who wanted to give him a home-had never really stopped looking him in the eye. Drugged and helpless, he had spat in Andrew’s face. Filled with fear that he would be found out, he allowed Andrew’s bloody hand around his neck without wavering. With the knowledge that Andrew carried knives and that he was drugged beyond reason he never stopped trying to pick him apart for answers. He had been angry and righteous and curious and soft, but he had never shrunk away, he hadn’t been afraid.

“What then?” Andrew demands, because this is not ignorable, this is a problem. He has done something wrong and if he doesn’t fix it he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

“Nothing.” Neil says and Andrew wants to break something. Wants to yell, wants to let the pit of anger in his chest eat him alive. But he is nothing without his control.

“That,” he says cutting the air with his hand “was not nothing.” Another day Neil might have smiled, Andrew directing that statement at him. Here, he is stark, he is serious, he knows what this means to Andrew, knows what it means for this precarious thing they have cobbled together between them.

“I didn’t see you,” he says and meets Andrew’s eyes to let him know it’s true. Andrew says nothing. That is not enough. Neil nods and lets his eyes slide away. “That used to happen. In Montreal I was- they found us and one of them when I was running by he grabbed me by the hair. It was-” He stops and closes his eyes. “All the time, to stop me- to take me, they would grab me by the hair or the shoulder or the wrist, and my mother she would too- when she was- when I had done something.” Here it is, out in the open, Neil has been hurt in too many ways to trust touch when he cannot see it coming. Even when he is somewhere safe, even when he trusts the people around him. That had been how it had happened with his mother after all.

Here it is, the truth, laid bare, vulnerable, trembling between them. Not because Neil is afraid, but because he is not. He meets Andrew’s eyes sure and clear and safe in the knowledge that Andrew will not lay waste to it. That Andrew will take his word and know it for the truth. That he will tuck it away and remember the next time he reaches for Neil. Trust, Andrew thinks, and does not immediately stomp out the feeling.

“Okay.” Andrew says, and it’s enough. It’s enough, it’s enough, it’s enough.

Neil takes Andrew’s hand and brings it to the bare side of his neck. Brings his fingers to the soft curls at the base of his skull and tucks his thumb against the delicate skin behind his ear. He holds his palm against the warm beat of his pulse and they both grow a little softer. It is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think and come talk foxhole court with me on tumblr @bemymeatbicyle.


End file.
